Coaching centres ring in trouble for students

Every time Ashish Sen's phone rings, he mutters a curse under his breath. The Class X student has for the last few weeks been flooded with pesky calls from a coaching centre near his house asking him for his ICSE examination seat number.

What's got Sen's goat is that he isn't a regular student at the centre. He had only enrolled for a test series once. But that hasn't stopped the coaching centre from bluntly asking him to reveal his examination details and to be allowed to talk to his parents. "I have told them that we are not interested in disclosing any of my details like seat numbers. But, they continue to call. It disturbs me during my study hours," says Sen.

Sen isn't alone. Several other city students claim that they, too, are being hounded by private coaching centres. Most such centres are keen on getting the students' examination seat numbers and their preliminary examination scores.

Girish D'Souza, an ICSE student from Bandra, says such calls became so frequent that he was forced to block some of the callers. "I was getting distracted and right now, I only want to focus on my studies."

Sources say such coaching centres are looking for their 15 minutes of fame by riding on the shoulders of toppers. If such students perform well in the board examinations, easily found out by a look at the seat numbers, private centres want to stake their claim in their coaching - even if the student only enrolled for a test series.  

Sangeeta Desai, a parent from Kandivli, says her daughter, who was quite confident of facing her board examinations until recently, was forced to join a private coaching centre in the neighbourhood due to peer pressure. "I had refused to enrol my daughter for any tuition class for her board examinations as a matter of principle. She used to study regularly and pays attention in school. After coming back from work, I would check her studies daily. But, her classmates scared her so much that she insisted on joining classes at the last minute so that she could at least get practice papers to solve," says Desai.

And the test series was only the beginning in her long line of worries. Teachers from the centre then started calling her up asking her repeatedly to get her daughter enrolled in the pre-examination batch. "I was frustrated with these calls. Classes should be sensitive enough not to disturb children or their parents who are stressed during examinations," Desai complains.